As a school of Music, Merit has provided students an opportunity to learn music regardless of their financial situation, with 60% of their students receiving financial aid. Today, more student families are capable to pay for tuition and Merit was in need of making their communications do more heavy-lifting to market the school.
THE CHALLENGE: Mango was contracted to re-envision the brand and redesign the website to create more awareness of the school and for parents/students to easily find classes and lessons.
New Website Map and User Experience
The engagement began by understanding Merit’s audiences and their barriers and motivations to engagement. From there, audience archetypes were built to understand primary and secondary audiences leading to user stories to help understand their journey through the website and how they expect to find information.
This led to the creation of their new Information Architecture to become the new user flow for the website.
Through this definition phase, Mango also determined that Merit should continue to use WordPress as their website platform due to the complexities of their technical features and functionalities, and the desire for future growth in capabilities.
Old Website
New Website Design
New Website Design and Web Guidelines
Running concurrently with the website architecture, Mango created a new system of brand guidelines to inform the website, digital, and offline creative.
The site launched in March of 2023, with integrations with their donation partner Q-giv, and with their CRM partner Hubspot.
THE RESULTS: Since the launch of the site, organic search has increased by 18%, and has led to over 500 net-new students for their fall, spring, and summer terms.
Instagram Posts
Instagram/Facebook Stories
Outdoor Window Clings
New Digital and Brand Design System
Mango deployed the new design system across online and offline channels, to create a modern look-and-feel for primary channels such as social media, email, and indoor/ outdoor signage.
Paid Media
Indoor Signage
Front-entrance Clings